Perception and attribution of employees' effort and abilities

Abstract

Purpose – Do customers recognize the effort and abilities of employees in service encounters? If so, to what extent do their perceptions influence customer satisfaction? The paper seeks to answer these questions.Design/methodology/approach – Two empirical studies, including a critical incident study and a video‐based experiment. Theoretically, this paper builds on motivation theory, naive psychology, and attribution theory.Findings – Customers spontaneously and explicitly judge service encounters on the basis of service employees' effort and abilities, perceived through certain behavioral cues. The specific, direct impact of perceived effort and abilities on customer satisfaction varies for different service types.Research limitations/implications – Taking different dependent variables into account (e.g. customer emotions, customer loyalty and brand perceptions) might offer a valuable contribution to the fields of service or brand research.Practical implications – Companies must examine customers' percept...